If there’s a narrative analogue to the atlas, the debut memoir of T Kira Madden is a luminous example ... nothing short of astonishing. The book spoils us with stylistic and structural novelty from start to finish. It’s a song of self at once stunningly variegated and yet somehow powerfully unified ... How, though, can a book composed of prose poems and micro-meditations, hefty essays and lyrical riffs, cohere? In a word, through its voice. Madden’s is singular: her turn of phrase throughout is both strange and arresting in its strangeness ... Madden’s incantatory prose is spell-binding ... The book is like an attic kingdom the reader can climb up into, an alternative reality glinting with redemptive humor and singular pain ... Right where you might expect a memoir to move to a more meditative plane, waxing reflective in a dust-settling sort of way, Madden pummels you with a suspenseful, unforeseen finale. The stunning conclusion only makes the kaleidoscopic nature of the book all the more remarkable ... What Madden has given us in an atlas of self. A book that whispers: I don’t believe in one story. I believe in the collective force of many.
This is a fearless debut that carries as much tenderness as pain. The author never shrinks from putting herself back into the world after every hurt, and we are lucky for it ... The writing sustains humor and a seriousness of attention ... This book is both devastating and funny, its author’s sense of humor infectious ... Madden has a gift for salient detail ... Madden’s memories tell less of a sense of belonging than they do displacement ... The author makes no attempt to knit together an easy self-realization from these vignettes, but the reader gleans many moments of insight from such a talented, adept narrator ... a vast, arresting story. It’s a story of loving addicts. Of a queer sexual awakening. Of inhabiting a female body in America. Of biracial identity. Of obsessive, envy-fueled friendships. Of assault. It’s a eulogy and a love song. It’s about girls and the women they become. And it’s all compulsively readable, not just because of those big themes, but because of the embodied, needle-fine moments that make the stories sing.
... stunning ... Like the greats, Madden writes with devastating clarity and lyricism, becomes a storyteller trustworthy enough to tell even the ugliest of truths. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls will make you want to remember, to want more. It takes unexpected turns, as Madden ends up with even more emotional discoveries about her family and herself, and as she navigates being truly fatherless after his death. This story takes lots of glittery guts to tell.
Madden seems to fold and unfold the maps of her life thus far, bending time to pin points together in wise and unexpected ways ... exquisitely told ... A tale of an artist’s journey that showcases the coexistence of familial love and complication with such shattering grace, understatement, and openness, Madden’s wholly original first book joins unforgettable memoirs like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Melissa Febos’ Abandon Me, and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy.
T Kira Madden’s Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is the forerunner of a new phase of creative non-fiction ... You might spot shades of Renata Adler or Elizabeth Hardwick in those confident, descriptive sentences, but with the time shifts and object fixations that give this book a lurking instability all its own ... LLtToFG is an ode to the 1990s, that special, horrible place ... you might feel that you know T Kira. That’s good. It means the machine is working. But because of this, it’s all too possible that the book’s reception will stop being about her creativity and zero in on her biography ... that would be a shame, because this book is exquisitely crafted ... The cascading close of the book sets this memoir further apart from what I’m used to seeing, and made this feel like the forerunner of something very new—the very idea of a bound essay collection fractures ... With Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, we have a job done intricately, intensely, over years of labor. Something that should be celebrated.
Readers searching for this kind of redemptive story may not like T Kira Madden's memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. But the other readers? The ones who value seeing the mess that is childhood, the volatility of desire, the madness of girlhood and what is expected of it? They may well wear out the book's covers with fervid rereading ... The honesty and vividness with which Madden writes and the tightly controlled structure she utilizes only emphasize the fact that Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is a deeply compassionate book, though not an apologetic one. In baring the bad and ugly alongside the good, Madden has succeeded in creating a mirror of larger concerns, even as her own story is achingly specific and personal.
... a grim, but hopeful memoir ... Madden turns that story into art by finding bittersweet beauty in the pain, by wielding her pen like a great director does a camera. In her hands, the past is present. We can see it, practically hear it, almost touch it. She knows what dialogue to highlight; she has the power to emotionally destroy you when she ends a chapter. She is not afraid to be vulnerable, to revisit scenes that have got to be incredibly painful. Above all, hers is a story of addiction told from the point of view of someone who must make peace with the fallout, and in doing so, grow from girl to woman.
Madden details her years growing up queer in ritzy South Florida through a tough, raw literary voice. The debut author gives readers uncomfortably intimate access into her difficult childhood ... Long Live is a bit dense at times, stuck in its immediacy, but as it builds to the death of Madden’s father, it finds some peace, painfully messy as it may be — and is all the richer for it.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls reads in large part like a series of well-crafted autobiographical essays ... But Madden does skillfully weave together her chapters, returning to themes and details at different points in the narrative to provide a strong sense of cohesion to her book. It is not always easy to read; Madden’s utter frankness about her own and her family’s struggles must have required epic strength not only to confront and process but also to write about and publish.
...this tale is a gritty glittering treat, composed of sentences and essays that will surprise you with their form as much as their content ... What every single essay in the book has in common is the earnestness and cynicism of a child who often had to parent the grown ups in her life, cultivated from an early age. There is also a sense of urgency and a hint of danger within each individual sentence ... I was not prepared for the way her words could crack open a life, a heart, and then – carefully, purposefully – put it back together ... One of the things that stands out most in Long Live is T Kira’s incredible generosity; almost everyone gets a shade of nuance, a gesture that shows us their humanity ... a must-read for all humans who enjoy good storytelling, careful renderings of the characters that make up a life, and blunt candor about what it can mean to be a girl. I think it is a particular must-read for queer humans.
Though the author’s aching emotional rawness sometimes makes for difficult reading, this is a deeply courageous work that chronicles one artist’s jagged—and surprisingly beautiful—path to wholeness. Affecting, fearless, and unsparingly honest.
